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So Alice Rivlin has gone rogue -- at least in the minds of partisan Democrats.

There will be a storm over John Maggs' story in POLITICO detailing Rivlin’s determination to cut the deficit through changes in Social Security; one specific reform on her list, for example, is raising the retirement age to 70. As one of President Obama’s appointee to the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, her words will carry great weight, especially among establishmentarian policy types, who have been advocating the same entitlement prescription for decades.

Unfortunately, what's missing from Rivlin’s argument -- and from the counter-argument of her detractors, mostly election-oriented Democrats who want to blame only Republicans for wanting to cut entitlements -- is the potentially transformative power of medical science as a way of solving these problems in a relatively painless way. The great epidemic raging in this country right now is Alzheimer’s Disease. If we could cure Alzheimer's or even push back its onset, we could make an increase in the retirement age relatively painless; indeed, such a medical breakthrough could be a win-win-win: A win for the government, a win for ordinary Americans who would like to stay healthy and productive for a longer period of time, and a win for the new industry created to manufacture and distribute the hypothetical wonder drug, to Americans and to the world.

Unfortunately, an anti-Alzheimer's strategy would require bringing new players to the Washington power table -- scientists, doctors, anti-trial lawyer reformers -- who have been pushed out of policymaking centrality by the politicos and financiers. Well, they’ve done a heckuva job. Let’s see how new and better thinking might address the entitlement crisis. An anti-Alzheimer's drug might get us to the same point Rivlin wants to reach, only with a lot less pain.

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